As a woman anxiously awaits her overdue period, she performs African-based rituals of purification. She cleans house and body, and calls on the spirits (Orishas in the Yoruba tradition), receiving much needed inspiration and assurance in a dream. The film combines beautifully intimate still and moving images of the woman’s body and home space, along with playful stop-motion sequences. —Jacqueline Stewart, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Oblique, episodic meditations on the semiotics and ethics of ethnic female identity are accompanied by a blandly cynical narrator explaining how to “win an invitation to the dominant culture.” —Kevin McMahon
Zeinabu irene Davis (born April 13, 1961) is an American filmmaker and professor of the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. Her works in film include narrative, documentary and experimental film. Born in Philadelphia, Zeinabu irene Davis, gravitated towards arts, "theater and education" (Field et. al, 19). With a Catholic school background, Davis studied at Brown University, then later travelled to Kenya, which furthered her interest in African American Studies. Furthermore, she pursued her first master's degree in 1983 focusing on African studies, later receiving a master of fine arts in film and video production both from UCLA in 1989. She has received numerous grants and fellowships from such sources as the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at many renowned colleges such as Antioch College and Northwestern University, but has more recently moved to teach at UC San Diego, where she currently serves as Professor of Communications. As a filmmaker, her films have been categorized as belonging to the genre of Black feminism due to the ways she incorporates the unique experiences of African American women.
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